Salvador Dalí brooch fetches £75,000 at auction

At Dreweatts’ first stand-alone sale of jewellery in London this version of Salvador Dalí’s ‘The Eye Of Time’ (El Ojo Del Tempo) brooch sold for £75,000.

Fashioned in diamonds, blue enamel and
platinum with a single cabochon ruby in the left corner, it
includes a 17-jewel Movado watch movement.

Dalí started to design jewellery in
partnership with the Argentinian-born goldsmith Carlos Alemany of
New York in 1940 and continued into the late 1950s. The Eye of
Time brooch was first designed for Dalí's wife Gala in
1949 - the original brooch is now on permanent exhibition at the
Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres where the original drawing
also resides.

It is not known how many were produced.
Speaking of this piece the artist said: "Man cannot change or
escape his time. The eye sees the present and the future."

Carlos Alemany produced limited editions of
the original jewels for general sale. This example was consigned
via the Dreweatt-Bloomsbury Rome office by a vendor whose family
member had purchased it in the 1950s from Alemany & Ertman, New
York. It came with the original Alemany & Ertman velvet
box.

The successful purchaser at Dreweatts sale
in Maddox Street on July 17, who went a considerable way over the
estimate of £8000-12,000, was a private American buyer.

The buyer's premium was 24/12%.

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